The last guest was seen out the door. Nathaniel and Mary had left with their friends. Mrs. Wheatley hugged me. “Thank you for the new poem,” she said. “And for giving Mr. Lopez, that dreadful man, a private recitation.”
“Phillis, we are going to try to get your poems published,” her husband said.
I pretended surprise. I hugged them both.
“Wait a moment before you celebrate,” Mr. Wheatley said. Laboriously, he sat down on a nearby chair. I propped his foot on a stool, with a silk cushion under it. He had the gout and was in great pain.
“Tell her, Mrs. Wheatley, what publication entails. It is not all punch and cookies.”
“Phillis does not expect life to be all punch and cookies, Mr. Wheatley,” she returned. “Nevertheless, you are right. Come sit, Phillis, sit.”
I sat.
She explained. “Getting one’s poems published costs money. Oh, a printer might be persuaded, betimes, to absorb the costs, but usually that is only to print a goodly supply of broadsides that celebrate some important event. I am perfectly willing to bear the financial burden, dear.”
“Tell her the rest of it,” her husband urged.
My mistress took a deep breath. “Before we get a printer, we must expose you to the right people. In this case, the most influential lights of Boston. Governor Bernard should bear witness to a recitation of yours, of course. And,” she went on placidly, “the lieutenant governor, Thomas Hutchinson; James Bowdoin; the Reverend Charles Chauncy; and other divines. John Hancock already heard you recite this evening. And was much taken with your talents.”
I could not speak. It was all too much.
“Are you willing, Phillis?” Mr. Wheatley asked.
They were looking at me, waiting. I looked back into each of their faces. They were getting old, I minded. The gold threads of her hair were near hidden by the white now. His face was getting heavier. Lines showed that had not been there before. Why had I not noticed until now? Their faces, so genteel, so aristocratic, so hopeful, had been anchors of kindness and love for me since I had first come here.
My eyes filled with tears. “Yes,” I said.
What could be worse than reciting in front of Aaron Lopez? If I could abide him, I could abide anybody.
Once more, Nathaniel had prepared me for what was to come. Once more, he had been right.
For the next two weeks I went out every afternoon with Mrs. Wheatley to call upon some luminary in Boston. Prince drove us through Boston’s streets in the ice and snow.
Everyone in the family had given me something for the wardrobe in which I was to make my “appearances.”
Mr. Wheatley gave me a blue cloak trimmed with ermine. Mrs. Wheatley had two new gowns made for me.
Nathaniel came home one day bearing a package wrapped in burlap. Inside were the finest pair of delicate yet warm boots I had ever seen.
Mary gave me her best muff, the one I had so often admired when she wore it to church of a Sunday.
Aunt Cumsee had sewn me a fine new pocket to wear around my waist. It was embroidered with the colors of summer.
I should have been happy, but I was not, as we set out the first day. Something was missing.
My cowrie shell. How I wished for it as we drove through a fine, needlelike snow that dusted the housetops and streets! We were to be received by Governor Bernard this afternoon. I was terrified.
As Prince drew the carriage up before the governor’s mansion, servants came running to assist us out of the carriage. But Prince was there before them, helping me down. In his hand he had a small package.
“Wif permission, ma’am.” And he bowed to Mrs. Wheatley. “I’d like to give somethin’ to Phillis, too.”
The governor’s servants stood waiting. Mrs. Wheatley knew she could not object. “Of course,” she said.
Prince and I had not had a decent conversation for months. He didn’t loll around much when his chores were finished, for which Mrs. Wheatley was grateful.
He handed the small package to me. “Open it,” he said.
Inside was a black velvet ribbon, the kind white girls wore around their necks, usually with a cameo in front.
On the front of mine was my cowrie shell. I gasped. “I lost it! Wherever did you find it?”
“You lost it in the yard. I had a hole bored in it so the ribbon could pass through.”
I drew it out of the wrapping. “It’s my cowrie shell,” I explained to Mrs. Wheatley. “My mother gave it to me and I thought I’d lost it. May I put it on?”
“Of course, dear, but do hurry. We can’t keep the governor waiting.”
I tied it around my neck. “I’ll wear it always,” I said. Mrs. Wheatley took my hand and hurried me down the brick walk.
“My dear,” Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson said the next day, when we were visiting his house, “your recitation was perfect. And the poem! I am much taken. Writing is a pastime of mine, you know. I have no talent at describing characters, but I took years to write my History of Massachusetts Bay. It was thrown into the gutter the night the mob destroyed my house in north Boston in sixty-five.”
He had the bluest eyes I ever saw. “That would have been the Stamp Act mob, sir,” I said.
“I see you know your history as well. They destroyed my home, my fruit trees; drank my wine, took my dead wife’s jewelry. They ruined every book and paper I owned. We had to move here, to Unkity Hill in Milton.”
“It’s a lovely home, sir.”
“Yes.” He stood up and gestured to a far window. “On good days you can see Mount Wachusett. To the east my fields run down to the Neposet River. And there is a wonderful view of Boston Harbor.”
I went to the window with him, looking toward the harbor. But all we could see was falling snow.
“Miss Grizzel, we’ll have tea now.” He turned to the elderly woman in lavender silk who sat doing needlework. She rang a bell cord for a servant.
“See what can be accomplished, Peggy, when one sets one’s mind to a task?” He walked back across the room and touched the golden curls of his young daughter. She was his favorite, Mrs. Wheatley had told me. His other daughter, Sallie, was married.
“Billie,” he said to his youngest son, “now you know why I would have you keep to your studies. Here we have a young woman who is a slave. Who had no formal education. And she writes like an angel. Would that you take example from her.”
I winced at the word “slave.” And for just a moment I felt like the bear on the wharf with the chain around its neck, again.
Then Hutchinson turned to speak to me, and his blue eyes were earnest and sincere. “My two older boys are already through Harvard, my dear, and I would be much gratified if either of them displayed an ounce of your talent.”
I blushed and curtsied. The man meant every word that he said. Nathaniel called him Tommy-skin-and-bones. But I liked him. He was a Tory, yes, but he had suffered much. And he was gracious and debonair in spite of the hatred directed at him in Boston. There was something here worth pondering. If I ever got the time to ponder anything again.
I did not seem to have a moment to myself these days, to think, read, or study. I was constantly on display. It was wearying.
And it did not matter to Mrs. Wheatley whether we visited Whigs or Tories. Politics had naught to do with her plans for me.
Shamelessly, she pursued both.
On the way to and from our destinations she would have Prince halt the carriage in front of booksellers’ shoppes. We visited the shoppe of James Rivington, that of Cox and Berry. And she had an inordinate fondness for newspaper editors.
“Oh, Mr. Boyles, we were just driving by and I wanted to see one of your esteemed new books. On these cold evenings I just love sitting by the fireside and reading.”
We hadn’t had an idle evening by the fireside in near a month. But Mr. Boyles, printer and bookseller on Marlborough Street who brought out the News Letter, was flattered, of course. In no time he had wiped his ink-stained hands, sent an apprentice for a tray of tea, and was listening avidly as my mistress expounded on the merits of my poetry.
Then around the corner to the Boston Gazette and Country Journal, owned by Mr. Edes and Mr. Gill.
All the newspaper editors rose from their desks to greet my mistress. All were friendly and encouraging to me.
“Smell the ink, Phillis,” Mrs. Wheatley said to me as we walked into Thomas Fleet’s Evening Post on Cornhill Street, late of a December afternoon. “Look at the press! They set words in print! And someday all of these newspapers will be printing your work. And all these booksellers carrying them.”
It was a heady business for a young girl. I felt the strange excitement. Newspapers were powerful and far reaching. They had a voice. And one day soon, they would give me one.
I wrote another poem. On the near-tragic sea voyage of Messrs. Hussey and Coffin.
The day when I was to be given a voice was coming, sooner than I realized.